The Retro Future is Here: Houses Beyond the Year 2000

The future is here! Unfortunately, dinner is not in pill form, I have nothing that looks remotely like a hovercar, and robots are still lumbering jokes. Where are the domed cities? The jetpacks? The shimmering silver unitards? It’s endlessly entertaining to look back and see where our guesses were right, and where they went hilariously wrong. Imagine that you’re sitting in a leather armchair in front of a roaring fire, slowly puffing on your pipe, dreaming of the land of the future… where will we be in the year 2000 and beyond? Let’s take a look:

The Home of the Future

The future home will be a work of art. If it’s not integrated directly with the land, it will still be open and transparent. the suburb as we know it will be transformed, as flying cars make it easier to live in a remote location without being disconnected from the community (plus, video phones will bring you closer to family and friends than you ever wanted to be).

The Bathroom

Showers are barbaric, didn’t you know? Step on up into your self contained cleaning device… basically a dishwasher for your body. It will spray you with cleansing water with massaging jets, give you a heated dry, and will finish with a cleansing wave of infrared and ultraviolet light.

The Kitchen

The future housewife will have plenty of time to sip martinis all day, as her giant appliances cook and prepare meals for the entire family to enjoy (at least, this is how it seems in all the material). The idea that a housewife may not be necessary with all of this time saving equipment is not a subject that’s ever really broached… It’s interesting that most visions of the future assume that appliances as we imagine them will be entirely gone; replaced by machines permanently hidden in our walls.

Video Conferencing

The idea of video phones was incredibly popular back in the day, and while the occasional video chat online does occur, video conferencing never became the hit people thought it would be. There’s a very good reason for this: When someone can see you with a camera, you want to look good. The last thing you want when you’re awoken by the ringing phone, is have someone see you lying in bed with tousled hair and drool on your pillow. Phone calls already seem intrusive enough compared to email, that the idea of someone spying on you at the same time brings it to another level of discomfort.

The Living Room

Living rooms are the center of most of our activities at home, and as such, they will be a nexus for all the technological gadgetry we can muster. Futuristic record players that disappear into walls, bipedal robots offering to take off our coat and vacuum the floor, and entire walls that display the newest film are just a few of the wonders in this generation. Much of the conjecture was correct in this case, at least in terms of vacuuming robots and giant wall encompassing displays.

Science

Scientists in the future no longer need to use their hands! They do the thinking and let the robots do the actual work. While we don’t give robots free reign during surgeries, there is some merit to this line of thinking, as doctors increasing use hand operated cameras to aid during operations. Thankfully, however, the robot hands are far from the intimidating titanium claws dreamed up by futurists.

Fashion

Future fashion will be frightening, according to the sources I’ve seen. People will be very aware that they are living in an enlightened time, and this will require that they either wear skin tight clothing with optional spacefaring gear, or revert to the classic Roman outfit of loose fitting robes.

Home Computers

The future will be so technologically advanced, that people will have computers in their homes. Featured in the left of this photo montage is an example of what the home computer might look like in the year 2004 (seriously). On the right, we have a cooler looking wall of computer gear, that still looks suspiciously like the inside of a submarine. I think we can all agree that computers are one area where human society has defied expectation. Considering how low these expectations were, we should be exceedingly grateful.